Kaffir Lime Recipes

I usually pair coconut soup with seafood. To ensure that the rest of the family could share a similar meal with me, I made scallop-lookalike sweet potato out of a Vietnamese root vegetable called khoai tu. It resembles sugar cane but once cooked, it's starchy with a subtle sweetness. I cut it into the dimension of sea scallops and pan-fried them. Once the fragrant coconut broth is ready, you just need to add the wonderful looking vegetarian "scallops".

Khoai từ has been available at the Asian market this season but it's a little pricey. I think this would make a fabulous dish for you to serve if you celebrate the Vietnamese New Year. I'll try to have a vegetarian diet the days before and after New Year's Day but since it isn't time for the festivities just yet, I indulged in the real thing with fresh, large and sumptuous sea scallops.

This year, the Asian New Year celebration (called Tết in Vietnamese) will happen during the first week of February, according to the Lunar calendar. I've mentioned in the past that, traditionally, you're required to eat vegetarian food (ăn chay) on the last day of the previous year and the first day of New Year.

Today, I'm sharing a vegan dish called kiểm that's a staple during the celebration. The dish is a sweet, savory soup made of pumpkin, bananas, coconut milk, mung beans, lotus seeds, wood ear mushrooms, sweet potatoes, ginger, tofu and raw peanuts. This is not a very common dish and it's only made for the celebration. If you know its origin, please let me know in the feedback section.

The winner of this week's giveaway is Amanda O. Congratulations and I hope you enjoy using my first cookbook about gourmet potato dishes as much I did developing the recipes!

The spicy paste in this coconut udon soup provides not only the kick, but also most of the flavor. It's made of miso paste, a lot of red Thai chiles, Thai basil, sesame and garlic. The rest of the preparation is very basic. A mix of Asian vegetables such as straw mushrooms, sweet baby corn and bok choy are boiled in vegetable broth. At the last minute, fried tofu, pre-cooked fresh udon noodles and coconut milk are added to complete the tasty soup.

The temperature is finally dropping in the Bay Area, which makes hot soup so soothing!